FROM WASHINGTONPOST.COM
Shout at the Xbox: '80s Metal Innovations
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It was a week of good news for fans of '80s heavy metal bands who also like video games.
Next week for the first time, fans of the rock-star-simulator game Rock Band will be able to download an entire album to their game consoles. That album: "Screaming for Vengeance," by the British heavy metal band Judas Priest, originally released in 1982.
Earlier in the week, Motley Crue, famous for '80s hard rock songs like "Shout at the Devil," became the first band to debut a single exclusively as a $1 download for the game.
And on Thursday, the game publisher Activision announced that it will soon sell a three-song bundle for another heavy metal band best known from that era, Def Leppard. The interesting angle? One of the songs in the downloadable pack will be available exclusively on Guitar Hero III before it is released on the band's forthcoming album.
That song, "Nine Lives," from the album "Songs From the Sparkle Lounge," will be on iTunes for Guitar Hero III five days before the album's release.
The Guitar Hero games allow fans to "play" along with popular rock songs by punching buttons on the neck and body of a controller shaped like a guitar. Rock Band, which came out last fall, expanded the concept by introducing a drum controller and a microphone.
The downloadable content for both games is scheduled to become available on both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 next week.
More albums are on the way soon for Rock Band, including one by the Cars and one by the Pixies. According to the game's designer, Harmonix, more than 8 million songs have been downloaded for the game.
NPD Group, a research firm, reported that U.S. retail sales of video games rose 57 percent, to $1.7 billion, in March. The charts were topped by sales for Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Nintendo's Wii console.
-- By staff writer Mike Musgrove, adapted from the Post I.T. blog. For more entries, visit washingtonpost.com/technology.
